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The #1 Germiest Place on Your Hands? Hint, It's the Spot Most People Forget to Wash

A lesson on hand-washing? Puh-lease, right? Well, we all may need a quickie refresher course. It turns out, most of us forget to wash a certain spot on our hands and that could mean your hands are harboring some dangerous germs right now...

Remember this next time you're scrubbing up: There's a certain place on your hands that you may be missing entirely when you're lathering up, says Richard Hopper, M.D., chief of plastic surgery and surgical director of the Craniofacial Center at Seattle Children's Hosptial. "The meaty part of the palm under the little finger and the thumb are called the hypothenar and thenar eminences," he says. "People often forget to wash these two parts of the hand. If you place invisible dye on a persons hand and ask them to wash, when you use a light to show the dye left behind, it is usually on those two parts."

So fascinating, right?

Do you think you miss these spots when you wash your hands?

P.S. How to deal with co-workers who never wash their hands after using the bathroom (gross!). And, touch this and up your cancer risk?

Photo: istock

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Sarah JioHealth and fitness writer. Lover of running, Nespresso, Lululemon, and all things French. Mama. New York Times best-selling author. Sometime insomniac.